This month we won another major victory in the fight for equality and dignity for our LGBT family. Orange County Public Schools (OCPS), the 10th largest school district in the nation, passed discrimination protections for our LGBT students and teachers. Many Florida school districts have passed non-discrimination policies that cover LGBT citizens.
It should not have been controversial.
But it was because anti-LGBT extremists targeted the transgender protections, and our School Board Chair, Bill Sublette, listened and obeyed, apparently thinking the gay community would accept “half a loaf” and abandon our transgender friends.
He was wrong.
Fighting for equality is not the same as debating tax rates, or mediating a business dispute. We are talking about human lives, and there is no 50% or 90% “compromise,” and it is never acceptable to leave anybody behind. Our community and a majority of our School Board understood this, and we fought and won this battle with no student or teacher left behind.
Here’s what happened, because you should know:
LGBT teachers, led by Clinton McCracken, worked with local advocates to encourage the School Board to implement non-discrimination policies for LGBT students and teachers. We secured sufficient support from School Board members to proceed with an adoption of policies to protect gay students and employees, but continued to advocate for inclusion of transgender students and employees. Chair Sublette advised us that he would support adding transgender individuals to the policies if there was sufficient support on the Board. At a School Board workshop on Sept. 20, all School Board members present except for Christine Moore expressed support for adding transgender protections to the policies. Chair Sublette not only voted to support this addition, he spoke very powerfully about the importance of these protections for gays and transgender people, and stated “this will say a lot about who we are as a community.” The final hearing to adopt these policies was set for Dec. 11.
A week before the hearing, anti-LGBT activist John Stemberger decided to wage a battle. True to form, he rallied his knuckle-dragging troops with ridiculous allegations that these policies would lead to unisex bathrooms, rampant cross-dressing, and protections for pedophiles. The School Board members were deluged with hysterical complaints. Sublette responded to the crazy parade by calling five of us to his office the night before the vote to say he was caving to the pressure and would remove transgender individuals from the proposed policies. He broached no discussion – it was a firm announcement. He had invited five gays to accept and join his betrayal of our transgender brothers and sisters, notably neglecting to invite our transgender colleague. We declined.
The School Board meeting was packed: red shirts to support the proposed policies, and blue shirts to rail against them. Numerous elected officials attended, each one of them in support of the proposed policies. The meeting lasted eight hours, ending at 1:30 a.m.
It was ugly. Sublette supported an amendment to strip out the transgender protections, arguing forcefully for his colleagues to support him. Fortunately, five of them did not, and the repulsive amendment was defeated, and then the policies were passed as proposed.
Give special thanks to School Board members Daryl Flynn and Nancy Robbinson, who led the charge to stand up to the anti-LGBT extremists and to Chair Sublette. Additional thanks to Joie Cadle and Rick Roach who each gave impassioned comments of support.
The courage and compassion of these four leaders was inspiring and will indelibly improve the lives of countless students and teachers. We are thankful that Kat Gordon ultimately voted for the protections, but dismayed that she inexplicably directed a homophobic diatribe at my wife for commenting that she was born gay, disrespecting Vicki and denigrating all of us – including the middle and high school LGBT students who were there to speak publicly for the first time.
Bill Sublette deserves our strongest condemnation. He will argue in his defense that he supported domestic partner benefits for OCPS personnel, and the discrimination protections for gays. But that is no excuse for his cowardly betrayal of transgender students and teachers.
He knew protecting them was the right thing to do, and instead he knelt at the altar of John Stemberger and failed his transgender students and teachers when they desperately needed his leadership and support.
I think we all know that the path to equality is unyielding and inevitable. Those who have joined the fight will look back and be proud that they were on the right side, the side that recognized that all human beings are entitled to dignity and safety, and the opportunity to achieve their greatest potential. Those who opposed equality, or stood idly by, or tried to bargain for half measures, will look back with regret and shame. There is only one right path, and we leave no one behind.
